BobS

You should expect nearly the same file size. Both have a data rate of 256K bps (bits per second). The same running time of audio should yield the same file size. Small differences would have to do with header info, ID tags etc.

Sony is not intentionally screwing its customers. It needs customers. I believe they thought they were big enough to make ATRAC a standard. They also believed all the junk the RIAA was putting out about mp3 downloads killing sales of CDs. They still have not figured out that the sales drop of CDs had many causes like: I can buy a DVD of a movie for about the same price as a CD of the soundtrack. People now spend money on game consoles, PC game software, DVDs, home theater and that all competes with overpriced CDs. Half of all CDs are bought by people over 45 and they are not buying Rock. They by from small labels with a wide variety of music (bluegrass, Celtic, New Age etc). Many CDs have one or two good tracks, the rest are not. People would buy many albums by the Rolling Stones, Allman Bros, James Gang etc but not many by Brittany Spears. Their are more, but the industry (not just Sony) started believing their lowering sales were caused by the customers stealing from them. So they started treating them like thieves. These attitudes (blaming your customers for your problems) are in many industries, not just the recording industry.

The instructions indicate that xD cards are supported natively. The only adaptors it mentions are for MS Duo and miniSD. You can find the instructions online to review them.

I copied from 4 flash cards. When done I looked at the MD. Each card had its own directory, named MCMDxxx, with xxx being sequencial numbers 001-004. Under each of these directories were the files and directories that were on the flash card. So it does not look like their is a problem with overwrites. Each copy does the whole card. If the MD cannot hold the entire card (however many meg that may be) it will not copy any. That is, if the card has 60 meg of data, the MD must have 60 meg free or nothing will be copied. This is because the unit is very simple, only a copy button and nothing else. That is also why it is fairly inexpensive. Since the transfer is over the USB port, I would expect the MD is powered from the card reader. The manual does not mention this at all but it would seem reasonable since the MD is powered by the USB port when it is hooked to a PC Again, it is not fast, just convienent. You push a button, come back several minutes later, and the copy is done. You can then use the flash card for something else. It supports most common flash card types, including SD.

I have not transferred files from flash used in a camera. When I transfer files though, it gives it a directory name like that used on my Sony digital camera. I would think it would give another name for more files. I will try it later today and post results. As for file maintence, their is none. One button on the unit that says "copy". The HiMD unit is just a drive to copy to. No changes in what your HiMD unit can do. It will just ignore the non ATRAC files. When you hook the 2 together you see "PC-MD" in the display just like you would if you hooked it to a PC. Again, I will try multiple transfers later today and report on the results

The transfer is not fast. It can take several minutes to fill an MD80 disc. If you are transferring several hundred meg to a 1Gig disc you could be waiting 10-12 minutes. The battery life is about what Sony claims (about 20 discs) but I have not tried it with rechargeables yet. Energizer also has some AAA lithum batteries that may extend the life. It is convient and I have had no problems using it. It is also nice to be able to transfer any common flash media to the MD. The file structure on the disc after you do the transfer looks just like what you have in your camera. The directory names are also the same that digital cameras use. Must use the software from a digital camera to carry out the transfer.

And not just Audible. I have many MP3s that SonicStage will not handle. I have been converting them to wav files and then letting SS upload them to my HiMD. This seems to work fine, just takes more time.

I play the .oma files with Windows Media Player 10. No problem. I get a message that they are not supported but do I want to try to play them anyway. I answer OK and they play just fine

They are for meeting FCC RF emission requirements. That is, RF put out by your MD. The cables can act like antennas and emit RF signals. They do not affect your recording

I have tried to back up a HiMD audio disk and could not get it to work. I can see several files in the HiMD directory and it looks like it will copy but it is not recognized by the player afterwords. Since I have Windows Explorer set to show all files I suspect Sony does something with the names. If you could do what you want, you could clone the disks which is something Sony does not want you to be able to do